Many processes and devices have been used for data-processing. Documents may contain text of various sizes. Individuals wishing to use such documents in a hardcopy form, may encounter limitations with respect to the smallest text size they can comfortably read depending on the quality of their eyesight. Thus, a user may wish to improve the readability of documents used in hardcopy form and may ‘right-size’ such documents by engaging in a trial and error approach to copying such documents with various magnifications until the smallest text sizes contained in the document are at a preferred size in the reproduced document. Right-sizing may also include reducing the size of the document containing text and the paper size it is printed on, and to conserve paper, as long as a minimum text size is maintained for readability. This too is typically accomplished through trial and error. Operator productivity declines linearly with increased numbers of documents, each having different document and text sizes (e.g., a mixed stack of marriage licenses, birth certificates, ID cards).
Prior art digital document copiers have attempted to “intelligently” select one or more document reproduction factors when other reproduction factors are provided. Relevant factors in such rendering devices include the original document size, magnification ratios, and output document sizes. For example, given an original document size (automatically determined by digital document system) and magnification ratio (manually selected by the user), the digital document system automatically selects an output document (e.g., paper) size. The problem with this approach is that the rendering device does not automatically optimize document reproduction factors to achieve a specified minimum text size in the rendered document. Such a problem has not been directly addressed by prior art devices and techniques.
Another is that such devices and techniques require the manual selection of text areas within a document to magnify to a desired text size. This approach is not scalable as the number of original documents and the number of text areas within these documents increase. It therefore believed that an improved image processing technique is required to overcome these disadvantages.
Some rendering features may permit a user to change the typeface or font size in an original document and scan a user-selected area of the original document, in order to convert the manually selected characters to a user selected font, and print the document. One of the problems with this approach, however, is that it is necessary for the user to manually identify every single instance of text that should be considered in the calculation in order to achieve a targeted minimum text size in the reproduced document. It is believed that these problems and others can be overcome and addressed by implementing the methods, systems and devices disclosed and described in further detail herein.